Action and meaning are emergent
properties of the time-dependent cross-couplings of a number of different
systems on diverse temporal scales. Meaning emerges in and through the
interaction of a number of different semiotic modalities and the
physical-material world. In the real-time of the unfolding activity, various
semiotic modalities (1) selectively map salient features of the material world
to their own activity, (2) at the same time that they map selected features of
other semiotic modalities to their own activity and (3) they map selected
features of participants’ perceptual-motor activities to their own activity.
It is the dynamic cross-coupling in time of a number of such heterogeneous
systems that produces the meaning-making event. These include the various
semiotic resources that may be deployed, objects, events, and so on in the
material world, and the perceptual and motor activities of the participants.
Action emerges in and through the cross-coupling and interaction of a
heterogeneity of semiotic-discursive and physical-material systems along the
lines outlined above. Genre-specific meaning-making activities and their
development occur because the cross-coupling dynamics of all these systems
create, in time, an internalised attractor space. It is in this space that
participants’ experiences prior to the here-and-now event, the previous stages
of the same unfolding event, and here-and-now responses to perceptual stimuli at
any given moment all act in synergy to produce genre-specific semiotic
performances and their resulting object-texts.

Meaning-making is, then, a dynamic process which is determined by a
number of perspectives, all of which interact together to produce the
occasion-specific activity. First, there is the perspective of what it is
possible to mean in terms of the intrinsic characteristics and dynamics of any
given semiotic resource system. Secondly, there is the sequential unfolding of
events in real-time, the logogenetic selecting and deployment of semiotic
options and their cross-coupling with specific external events, as well as
changes in cross-coupling strengths in moments of transition from one phase of
the activity to another. Thirdly, there are the sensori-motor reactions of
participants to what they see, hear, feel, touch, grasp, point to, and so on, in
their spatio-temporal purview at any given moment.

A theory of human social meaning-making needs to account for both
linguistic systems and their modes of deployment along with the ways in which
other non-linguistic semiotic resource systems are co-deployed either in concert
with language or with other, non-linguistic, resources. Meaning-making is
inherently multimodal in precisely this sense. This paper explores the
thesis that meaning-making is centrally concerned with the cross-coupling and
matching of bodily dynamics with the world in the course of jointly enacted and
time-bound discursive activity. This means that the participants in time-bound
discursive activity must reduce the degrees of freedom of both the external
world and their bodily dynamics so as to achieve a fit between the two. However,
this fit is best seen as a flexible, dynamic and adaptive process whereby
heterogeneous elements and resources self-organise in what I call the ecosocial
space-time in which interaction occurs. I shall propose that the cross-coupling
of multimodal semiotic resources is the very engine of discursive activity. On
this basis, I shall consider the following issues:

1.the need to re-think
the expression stratum of semiosis in relation to bodily dynamics and their role
in meaning-making;

2.the modelling of the
cross-coupling dynamics that link both the material world and the bodies of
interactants to the semiotic resources deployed; intra- and inter-semiotic
cross-couplings and the text-context relationship;

I shall
also argue that the multimodal meaning-making resources are integrated, rather
than autonomous, systems of meaning-making resources. This suggests that beyond
a certain point it is inappropriate to treat the various modalities of meaning
making – viz. linguistic, gestural, pictorial, and other resources – as
constitutively separable. Thus far, the tendency has been to describe the
specific characteristics of these as separate systems. However, we also need to
ask how various semiotic modalities act on and affect each other not only
instantially but also systemically. Only in this way can be begin to understand
the ways in which non-linguistic meaning-making resources affect participation -
conscious and unconscious - in the pedagogical process.

The
discussion will be illustrated through the analysis of a number of videotaped
sequences of discursive interaction.